Use of Autobiographies
Hello,
Does anyone know of works written on how to use
autobiographies in historical research? More
precisely, those of Vietnamese writer(or of other
Asian nationalities). There is significant literature
on the use of autobios of North American and European
writers but I have had difficulty locating
methodological/theoretical works on autobios coming
from other parts of the world.
Thanks for your time!
Christine Pothier
PhD student, Department of History
University of Ottawa
One useful book could be:
C.W. Watson: _Of Self and Nation, Autobiography and the Representation of Modern Indonesia_. University of Hawaii Press 2000.
Harry
Dr Harry Aveling, PhD DCA
Dept of Asian Studies
La Trobe University
Victoria 3086, Australia.
Tel: 61-3-9479-1213
Fax: 61-3-9479-1880
Adjunct Professor of Southeast Asian Literature, Ohio University.
I would look in anthropology, or even take an ethnographic field methods
class. We're the people who have been listening to lives outside the
West for a couple hundred years, often editing books and turning them
into other books.
Autobiography in modern VN is the royal road, you can follow the whole
20C, especially among writers. Peter Zinoman just worked up the VCP
prison memoirs. Eric Henry has recently completed his translation of
Pham Duy's rather more expansive story, only one of the fabulous
multimedia works from the early EBAI students.
Dan
This is a bit of a tangent, but now that Dan is naming titles (and I'd
love to hear others!), let me toss in the name of one I just ran
across that I found fascinating: "The Central Highlands: A North
Vietnamese Journal of Life on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, 1965-1973". It
tells the story of a surgeon who was sent south and came to be in
charge of various medical operations, focusing on the day to day:
generating electricity for the operating room by riding a bicycle,
inventinve strategies for surgery where equipment was lacking, food
(and the lack there of), rain, drought, etc.
Diane
A very interesting area of inquiry since there are quite a large corpus of
autobiographies written from all sides during both the First and the Second
Indochina war.
Just coincidentally, I find the advertisement attached below which may be of
some interest.
I have collected no less than 50 autobiographies in the hope of some day to
do something with them.
The omission of some of the most glaring details in those autobiographies is
revealing. It once again highlights the supreme human capacity of self
deception.
Nguyen Ba Chung
====================================================================
From: To: "Leena Messina" <Leena.Messina@anu.edu.au>
Dear all,
Please circulate widely the attached document.
Using lives: a postgraduate workshop in biography
6-10 February 2006
Are you using lives in your research, exploring the biographical dimensions
of your subject, or drawing on the methods and objectives of life history?
Call for applications
The Australian Dictionary of Biography, the History Program, RSSS, and the
Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University are
collaborating in convening a workshop for postgraduate students working in
biography and life history, to be held at the ANU, 6-10 February 2006. In
accordance with the conditions below, and a limited availability of places,
this workshop is open to research students from any discipline and currently
enrolled in an Australian university.
Many thanks,
Leena Messina
Programs Manager
Humanities Research Centre
Old Canberra House (Building 73), Lennox Crossing
The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
T: Direct international: 61 2 6125 4357; Australia: 02 6125 4357 (phone and
voicemail)
F: Direct international: 61 2 6125 1380; Australia: 02 6125 1380
E: Leena.Messina@anu.edu.au
WWW: http://www.anu.edu.au/HRC/
ANU Cricos Provider No. 00120C
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
==========================================================
Using lives:
a postgraduate workshop in biography
6-10 February 2006
Are you using lives in your research, exploring the biographical dimensions
of your subject, or drawing on the methods and objectives of life history?
Call for applications
The Australian Dictionary of Biography, the History Program, RSSS, and the
Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University are
collaborating in convening a workshop for postgraduate students working in
biography and life history, to be held at the ANU, 6-10 February 2006. In
accordance with the conditions below, and a limited availability of places,
this workshop is open to research students from any discipline and currently
enrolled in an Australian university.
Objectives
Biography and 'life writing' are figuring increasingly prominently in
humanities and social science research, both as central approaches and as
methods by which to advance diverse areas of enquiry. As a form, biography
retains its popularity, and adapts creatively to new technologies and
opportunities in presenting research. This workshop will provide a forum in
which postgraduate students working on aspects of biography can discuss,
reflect on and debate aspects of the 'biographical turn' in scholarship,
publication and the media, as it relates to their work, and to their
opportunities for professional development. The workshop will:
-generate discussion and reflection on issues of biographical
enquiry;
-enable students to develop networks to assist in their research
and development;
-explore opportunities for the presentation of
biographically-informed work using diverse resources and media.
Format
The workshop will be led by experts in areas related to these objectives,
and evaluating new directions and opportunities in biographical enquiry in
fields ranging from autobiography, across models including modernity, gender
and transnationalism, to issues of publication and the presentation of
biography in re-enactment, film and digitisation initiatives such as those
of the ADB Online project. Among the speakers will be: Gordon Briscoe,
Lenore Coltheart, Ann Curthoys, Desley Deacon, Ian Donaldson, Rosanne
Kennedy, Marilyn Lake, Di Langmore, Iain McCalman, Michael McMahon, Jill
Matthews, Frances Peters-Little, Jill Roe, Tim Rowse, Margaret Somerville
and the research editors of the ADB. The program will be centred on
sessions in which students present their own research for discussion.
Location
'Using Lives' will be held at the Humanities Research Centre, Old Canberra
House, ANU. Self-catering accommodation for the week will be provided at
Liversidge Court, ANU.
Eligibility
The workshop is open to postgraduate (MA and PhD) students who are currently
enrolled in a degree course in an Australian university, are working on
research projects which are substantially biographical in subject, theme or
method, and whose attendance is endorsed by the head of the department in
which they are enrolled.
Applications should include: thesis title and abstract (250 words max.),
curriculum vitae noting stage of current research; and a letter of
endorsement, signed by the head of department in which the student is
enrolled. Applications will be assessed by a committee (Nicholas Brown,
Desley Deacon, Ian Donaldson, Iain McCalman) according to the suitability of
the research topic to the workshop's themes, and the current stage of
research.
Applications should be emailed to nicholas.brown@anu.edu.au by 11 November
2005.
Cost
The workshop and self-catering accommodation (for students from outside
Canberra) will be funded jointly by the Australian Dictionary of Biography,
History Program, RSSS, the Humanities Research Centre, and supported by the
National Institute of Social Sciences and Law. Students will need to fund
their own travel.
For further information, please contact: Nicholas Brown, Australian
Dictionary of Biography, H.C. Coombs Building, Australian National
University, ACT, 0200; (02) 6125 3052; nicholas.brown@anu.edu.au
Dear Chung--
I don't know what "something" you hope to do with them, but several of
us who teach have lamented the lack of a range of autobiographies and
memoirs in English. So this note just comes in strong support of your
doing "something".
Diane
Dear Diane:
Thank you for your words of encouragement. Currently I concentrate almost
exclusively on the translation of poetry for the simple reason that I enjoy
reading poetry and it usually takes much shorter time to read and to
translate. Prose requires much longer lead time and a much more concentrated
effort if you want to do it right. For poetry, you could do a few poems, get
sidetracked into something else, but could always return to some other
poems, each a germ in itself, and standing independently by itself.
What interests me most in these autobiographies is to try to decipher the
mystery of how the Vietnamese ever allowed themselved to be drawn into such
a mess, knowingly or unknowingly, with some being even proud of it. What
happened to those who foresaw the tragical consequences before they happened? Why their efforts of finding a third path failed utterly ?
It is my humble view that unless the Vietnamese fully understood the debacle
that led to the death of four to five million combatants and civilians,
mostly civilians, the almost total destruction of the country -
environmentally and culturally, whose consequences are very much still with
us, and are the hidden causes of all our current divisions, it could happen
again, as some, no doubt, are very happy that it could start again.
What self-deceptions led to that debacle ? Could these autobiographies help
to throw a shining light on that ?
Nguyen Ba Chung
of note, re: autobiographies/memoirs/life history, VN
"Ao Dai: My War, My Country, My Vietnam" by Xuan Phuong, English ed.
2004, Emquad publ. was recently translated from the French and sent to
our student journal at UH for review (in the next issue). The most
interesting aspect of her account was the blunt descriptions of bleak
life in Hanoi in the 1970s and 80s. I also found a copy of Mark
Sidel's translation of Duong thi Thoa (Le Thi)'s account, in the
journal Signs, 23(4), 1998 which was quite fascinating.
I don't know of any serious attempts to analyze women's memoirs such
as these, but this would be a great research topic and would
definitely fill a void in the English-language corpus of first-hand
accounts.
Margaret Barnhill Bodemer
Christine,
At the risk of sounding immodest, you might find my Journal of Asian Studies article on Tran Duc Thao (Journal of Asian Studies, August? 2002) to be of use. I explore the issue of how to represent an individual's past, and in particular when fragments of "autobiography" appear in sources like self-criticism texts. Tran Duc Thao is a particularly interesting case because there are two (auto)biographies that haven't been stictched together well: the tale of his becoming a philosopher in France (up to 1950 or so), and the tale of his life in Vietnam. It's as if he is two different individuals, known in two completely divorced worlds.
Christoph Giebel, of course, has addressed some key issues in biography and autobiography in his work on Ton Duc Thang.
I'd be interested to hear others comment on the relevance of other writing on autobiography to studying Vietnamese writers. Some of the literature on autobiography out there seems to see autobiography as a narrative of self-fashioning and self-actualization. Is such literature too "self" obsessed? Vietnamese, historically, have not been published diaries or flaunted the self. And when they do flaunt an individual (e.g. biographies of Ho Chi Minh written secretly by Ho himself) they have a clear didactic function.
Shawn McHale
The topic of autobiography, and biography for that matter, relating to Vietnam is a fascinating one, and one that could do with a lot more research. Shawn is right that historically Vietnamese have not written a lot about themselves, though there are places where one can find some fascinating exceptions. The following are just two from the 18th century:
Phan Huy Ich's various collections of poetry include his brief prose prefaces, many of which describe the context in which he wrote the poem: my wife is ill, my legs hurt, my house just burned down, I got summoned by the Tay Son Emperor, but was nervous about going. Frankly, I found some of these comments more interesting than the poems.
Pham Dinh Ho (1768-1839), who was a prolific writer of prose and poetry. His collected essays, esp. Vu Trung Tuy Buy (lit. Following the Brush Amid the Rains) include fascinating personal information, esp. in the introduction where he writes about his addiction to tea (!), and of playing with his father's official's hat as a kid. Some of the anecdotes in the body of the text also describe his teaching career and various outings he made.
I am starting work on a new project to write a biography of Philiphe Binh (1759-1832), a Jesuit priest who travelled from VN to Portugal, where he lived for more than 35 years. He wrote prolifically as well, and a fair bit about himself. He was highly opinionated, as well as an excellent observer of life around him, which is reflected in his writings. His writings represent perhaps the earliest self-consciously autobiographical writings by a Vietnamese.
About Asian autobiography, one could also look at Pei-Yi Wu, The Confucian’s Progress, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), which is a study of the autobiographical tradition in China.
For biography in VN there are of course the Nguyen Dynasty biographies - Dai Nam Liet Truyen, as well as the many records of examination candidates. There are also numerous 18th through 20th century biographies of local heroes, spirits, etc. The tradition of glorifying national heroes, whether they fought the Chinese, the French, the Americans, etc. is also a rich one that belongs to the biographical tradition. I realize that this is a bit off the topic of auto-biography, but it seems that some rewarding research about Vietnamese biographical traditions, their forms, subjects, and objectives could be undertaken.
George Dutton
I’d like to refer to Tran Thai Tong’s introduction to Thien Tong Chi Nam, often cited as “Thie^`n To^ng Chi? Nam Tu+.”, as perhaps one of the first pieces of self-consciously autobiographical writings in Vietnam. Though written in the traditional classical style, it recounted the king’s spiritual crisis which forced him to flee the capital in disguise with the intention of abandoning the throne for a more tranquil existence in Yen Tu mountain. It throws a great deal of light on the thinking of one of the most notable kings of Vietnam in the 13th century, his relationship to National Teacher Phu Van, and the idea of kingship at the time.
One may also mention the 254 NOM poems writen by Nguyen Trai (1380-1442), with a lot of
autobiographical details about his life in exile from the court. Some obvious ones are poem #01, 04, 08, 51, 68, 120, etc. For a classical writer of the 15th century, these poems are unsual in their personal details and reflection.
-Chung